LOOM is concerned with the history of our divided country, a violent division preceding civil war and by now embedded in our cultural landscape. The non-sentimental poems are cool, clear and literal. They are narrated by white Americans who position themselves in relation to "slave power" and cotton as "lords of the loom" and "lords of the lash". Boston is central to the story, and the cities of Lawrence and Lowell. -Fanny Howe, winner of the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize and National Book Award Finalist